Ben Cohen being lead out of a Senate Committee hearing | Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images
The ice cream company’s founders have always been political
Yesterday, Ben & Jerry’s founder Ben Cohen was among the protesters taken into police custody at a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing at which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. answered questions about HHS spending, layoffs, and other changes. Video shows protesters leaping up from the benches with signs and shouting, “RFK kills people with AIDS,” before they’re dragged out of the hearing by police. Cohen stands behind them in a gray blazer, and can be heard saying, “Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the U.S.” He added, “Congress and the senators need to ease the siege. They need to let food into Gaza. They need to let in food to starving kids.” He, too, is escorted out.
Cohen posted the video of the protest to X, writing, “I told Congress they’re killing poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs, and they’re paying for it by kicking poor kids off Medicaid in the US. This was the authorities’ response.”
I told Congress they’re killing poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs, and they’re paying for it by kicking poor kids off Medicaid in the US. This was the authorities’ response. pic.twitter.com/uOf7xrzzWM
— Ben Cohen (@YoBenCohen) May 14, 2025
Cohen has been released from police custody, and according to the New York Times, was charged with the misdemeanor “crowding, obstructing or incommoding.”
It’s no surprise to find Cohen among the outspoken protesters. Though he and co-founder Jerry Greenfield are no longer involved in the company, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream has always put politics at the forefront of its business. In 2016, it declared its support for Black Lives Matter. In 2019, it released a flavor inspired by Bernie Sanders that featured hot cinnamon representing “our political revolution holding politicians’ feet to the fire to make America work for working people of all races and genders.” In 2021, it announced it would no longer sell its product in Israel, a move Cohen and Greenfield supported in a Times op-ed. It has an entire activism section of its website, where it outlines commitment to issues like LGBTQ+ and refugee rights and environmental justice. And more recently, it has gone to bat with its parent company, Unilever, for allegedly threatening these commitments to social values.
The issue Cohen spoke of in the Senate hearing could not be more urgent. The UN estimates one in five people, nearly 500,000, are facing starvation in Gaza, as Israel blocks aid into the region. Most recently, the Dutch government, previously seen as a staunch ally to Israel, called Israel’s ban on supply aid into Gaza a breach of international humanitarian law.
Cohen joins a host of protesters, students, journalists, and others who have been censured for speaking out about Palestine. Ben & Jerry’s has not released a statement on the arrest, but Cohen posted again to X this morning: “I can’t call myself an American and not put my body on the line. For me, our government-funded destruction and slaughter of families living in Gaza is an attack on justice, common decency, and what I had thought was the American way. The American way that Superman used to defend, along with Truth and Justice.”
